Low vision refers to an individual's general loss of eyesight. The term includes individuals who may be considered blind but who nonetheless have some remaining eyesight. People with low vision may experience, for example, impaired central vision, peripheral vision, contrast sensitivity, or depth perception. Individuals suffering from low vision struggle with many everyday tasks that sighted individuals take for granted. Such individuals experience great difficulty in reading, writing, watching television, perceiving small objects, or seeing fine detail. Magnifying glasses have long been used by these individuals to enlarge objects or text. Magnifying glasses, however, are of limited use.
Desktop electronic magnifiers, sometimes referred to as closed circuit television devices (cctv), have now largely supplanted magnifying glasses. These devices employ a camera having CMOS technology for generating an enlarged or magnified image of the object. The user is then able to view an enlarged image of the object as it is displayed on an adjacent monitor. Desktop magnifiers are advantageous because they can provide detailed images of objects at very high resolutions. This permits users to select the level of magnification needed to accommodate their individual vision. Also, because desktop magnifiers can be coupled to an external display, users are able to generate very large images of the objects being viewed.
An example of a traditional desktop magnifier is U.S. Pub. 2006/0203093 to Trulaske. Trulaske discloses a closed circuit video magnification system. Notably, Trulaske includes a camera 4 that is mounted over a table by way of an adjustable support. Separate support arms 9 are used to mount an LCD screen.
Magnifiers such as Trulaske, however, are large and bulky and are often designed to permanently reside on a user's desk. Obviously the stationary nature of these magnifiers limits their usefulness. A further limitation is that traditional desktop magnifiers are designed only to magnify objects that are directly below the camera. As a consequence, the only objects that can be magnified are objects that can be placed adjacent the magnifier. Again, this severely limits the usefulness of the magnifier. What is needed, therefore, is a desktop magnifier that is readily transportable and that can enlarge distant images. The video magnifier of the present disclosure is designed to fulfill these and other shortcomings present with existing magnifiers.